


My Door Is Always Open

by orphan_account



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Discussions of abuse, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 20:33:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14838705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Nott tells Caleb more of the story of her life with her clan.Post C2E19.





	My Door Is Always Open

**Author's Note:**

> Working on a fluff request and some porn also, but unsurprisingly I had some feelings after we learnt a little more about Nott's backstory.

Since the revelations about Caleb’s past, he’s been—prying isn’t the right word—but he seems to be inquisitive about Nott’s own past. She did share with him some of it, but he keeps telling her that he’s ready to lend an ear when she wants to share more. The first time it was sweet, the second time it felt a little odd to repeat—now it’s starting to approach prying. For all of Caleb’s wonderfulness, Nott can appreciate that he’s not the best with people; he’s still rather shy, and he won’t come out and ask when he wants to, which is clear that he wants to now.

When they’re grabbing rooms, there’s a temptation there for Nott to get a room for herself or to sleep with the other girls. She’s never actually done that yet, though, a small voice in the back of her brain reminds her. _Always go to Caleb in the night_. It makes her feel sick with it all when she stops to think about it—how her heart feels like it’s on a string.

As she’s entertaining that thought whilst they’re booking in, she notices Caleb thumbing at his pockets and retrieving his coin pouch. Opening it quickly—so quickly that Nott doubts anyone else but her notices—he sees him count it out. A single gold piece. He’s low on funds again already. Caleb seems to exhale and the coin falls from his person. Nott knows that it’s the cost of learning, of becoming more powerful. She desperately supports that. But it concerns her how he always seems to stay quiet about how pathetic his wealth is getting before he comes out and admits it.

“I’ll take a room for me and him,” Nott says to the innkeeper, gesturing to the human next to her. She can always steal more if she needs coin; she doesn’t burn through like he does either. Under her breath, she mumbles, only loud enough that the innkeeper will hear, “One bed should be fine.”

The majority of the time, she knows she’s hidden well. She’s small, she keeps her head down and covered with the mask and hood; it should be fine. Yet when she’s asking for this it always feels like someone’s going to catch her—the beastly goblin with a human. It sets her teeth on edge, which in itself is terrible, as chattering goblin teeth would blow her cover pretty quickly.

The innkeeper doesn’t react, though. He hands the key to her and she passes him the coin, and he doesn’t appear to be paying much attention.

When they reach the room, Nott sets her bag down next to the bed and sits down as she watches Caleb go around the perimeter with the thread. When he’s finished, he pockets the silver spindle and stands there awkwardly. He must be able to feel the tension coming from Nott, sensing a discussion coming.

Looking at the ground, she takes a deep breath before beginning to speak. “I—You seem to have some questions. About me. About before we met.”

Caleb shrugs. “We don’t have to talk about it. I meant what I said—I don’t mean to pry but the door is always open.”

“But you _do_ have questions, though, and it’s fine. We’ve been together—travelling together,” she corrects herself, “for a while now. You’re allowed to ask. I may not answer, but you can ask. We don’t need to keep tiptoeing around this. We've tried that approach—I don't know if that worked.”

“Hardly seems fair when you don’t ask about my—” Caleb trails off. “I didn’t ask because I didn’t want you to ask me. But I never thought that it would be so… So awful. What you’d been through— You didn’t deserve that.”

“Neither did you.”

He swallows. Nott can see the disagreement in his eyes. She can see how badly that he wants to turn around and berate himself in front of her. But he holds back, swallowing the bitter words down.

“I don’t think I’m a bad person for any of the stuff that happened,” she starts. “I don’t think I’m the best, but I’m not bad. _They’re_ bad.” She holds that word in contempt as she spits it out.

“You had no choice. Of course, you aren’t.”

“Neither did you,” she repeats, even softer this time.

The silence lies with them a while, and Caleb sits himself down on the bed next to Nott. They stare straight ahead at the door like they’re waiting for someone to come barrelling in. No one does, of course. Though the tone makes the room feel open somehow—they need to be more closed in, hidden from view from the rest of the world.

“They’re awful creatures. I’m not lying—”

“I would never say you were.” He’s being honest.

“When I was a soldier, they tried to make me try to help kidnap the children sometimes. I didn’t. I wouldn’t. When they got me back to the camp, they’d beat me till I passed out.”

Caleb lays his hand on hers and breathes in, and from the corner of her eyes, Nott can see his face grow darker. She keeps talking.

“A couple of times when I was a builder, I—dropped things. Okay, it wasn’t a couple of times. It was a lot. You know I get scared by noises and things, and they didn’t like that. I got drunk sometimes before we started working, and that didn’t help. They got so sick of it one day that they decided that I wasn’t worth feeding for a while.”

As she continues to talk, she can feel the echo of the emptiness in her stomach and the frailness of her strength.

“It got to 10 days. I was so hungry. I got all weak and I couldn’t carry anything at all then, so it kept getting worse and they kept getting angrier. They only let me eat because we—the clan got into a bit of trouble. A lot of the soldiers died. We were _decimated._  They only let me live because they were losing too many of us.”

She feels Caleb’s weight lean into her, arm around her back whilst the other clutches at her hand. He’s a warm sanctuary—has been since they met—amongst the horrors of talking about this.

“I can’t even go through all of it. Everything about it— _everything_ about them—was awful. In the end, though, they made me the torturer’s assistant.” Nott swallows. “I watched all kinds of horrible stuff happen there. For a lot of it, I just watched—I was too scared to stop it. It’s one of the worst things I’ve ever done, and I hate that I did it because I was so scared.” She desperately hopes that Caleb likes her as much as she hopes he does before continuing, “Trent tortured you, didn’t he? How would you have felt if someone did nothing?”

Caleb interrupts, “You were scared. They were torturing you. It wasn’t the same.”

“But I am a good person, or I try to be—I should have taken the beatings; I’d taken beatings before and I know I can stand it. I didn’t know if the people they brought in could stand it.” Nott’s voice goes up to an even shriller tone than usual; she hates how feeble it makes her sound. “So, it’s kind of why I brought all of this up in the first place. Trent hurt you, in horrible, horrible ways. And I’ve watched stuff like that happen a lot... You seemed like you had questions about this stuff, so I thought I best— If you want to leave— I wouldn’t blame you. I wouldn’t stop you. I know—”

Without moving his hands from her, Caleb presses a kiss into Nott’s hair. “I’m not going to leave you. You’re right. You’re a good person. Being without you would be too awful.”

They go back to silence as Caleb threads his fingers through hers in quiet solidarity. He’s not going anywhere without her.

“I do have a question if that’s okay?” Caleb says eventually.

Nott looks to him and nods. “You’re allowed to ask.”

He hesitates for a moment. “You didn’t answer before when you were asked. Did you love your halfling friend?”

Her face goes blank. It was not a question she was expecting.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to answer.”

She lets her weight fall onto Caleb, as she tries to figure out how best to respond.

“I’ve loved someone else too, it’s fine,” he reassures.

And that’s—something. There’s an unspoken admission there from Caleb.

Should she tell him the truth? That at the time, she didn’t think she loved him. Nott thought that it was just the way that you looked at friends because she’d never had any point of comparison. He was so exceptionally kind and generous—he shared everything with her and he was happy to do it. He valued her. He told her she was clever and important after years of being told she was useless and pathetic by the rest of her clan. When they made the plan to run, when he told her to run in the opposite direction, it made her heart ache and her eyes sting more than the worst of the beatings or the fear.

Should she tell him that when she met Caleb, it cemented that version of events in her head? She’d grown attached far too quickly. She’d gone from breaking this poor scared human out of jail to being utterly devoted to him in a matter of days. Because he was also tolerant and considerate, and he cared though there was something that was broken about his soul. Nott let herself pin her hopes and dreams on this man, the way she had with her first friend, and despite the heartbreak of the first time, silently vowed to follow this him wherever he went. She needed his help. She wanted to help him.

The fact that they’d kissed and fucked and held each other when the nights were dark and no one else could see didn’t seem to factor into her realisation. In her clan, people would fuck and it meant nothing—just an itch that needed to be scratched, animalistic and at times felt necessary.

But it appears that it did mean something—now that she’s got other friends in the Nein, it’s clear that what she and Caleb are is different. She cares about them, but the way that love sits in her chest feels different. The way that she looks at Caleb is like how she looked at _him_ all that time ago, and she doesn’t know what to do with any of these realisations.

“I don’t want to think about him too much, to be honest.” Caleb looks up at her confused. “Not because he did anything bad; if I think too long, I wonder if he got away and that—” She leaves the sentence unfinished.

Caleb nods. “It’s why you don’t want to go back to the village—you’re afraid to find out that he might not have made it?”

“It’s part of the reason,” Nott admits. “But it’s not the only one. It’s all bad memories there, and they do despise goblins. I don’t want to go back.”

He squeezes her tight, and they fall back into quiet again.

“If that ever changes, you let me know.”


End file.
